Jones v. State
Decision Date | 04 June 1908 |
Citation | 156 Ala. 175,47 So. 100 |
Parties | JONES v. STATE. |
Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Appeal from Criminal Court, Jefferson County; A. C. Howze, Judge.
Jackson Jones was convicted of living in adultery or fornication with a white woman, being himself a negro, and appeals. Reversed and remanded.
The facts are sufficiently set out in the opinion of the court. The general charge was requested by the defendant, and refused by the court.
Robert E. Smith and R. T. Shugart, for appellant.
Alex. M. Garber, Atty. Gen., for the State.
The defendant, a negro man, and Ophelia Smith, a white woman, are jointly charged by the indictment in this case with the offense of living in adultery or fornication with each other. The indictment is based on section 5096 of the Criminal Code of 1896 (section 7421 of the Criminal Code of 1907), and charges a felony. On a demand for severance, it was granted and the man (appellant) was tried alone. The trial resulted in his conviction; hence this appeal.
With the exception of the racial feature, the constituent elements of the offense are the same as in ordinary cases of adultery and fornication. The voluntary sexual intercourse by the man and woman with each other Brown's Case 108 Ala. 18, 21, 18 So. 811, and cases there cited; Walker's Case, 104 Ala. 56, 16 So. 7; Wright's Case 108 Ala. 60, 18 So. 941.
The testimony shows that two police officers in the city of Birmingham, while making a "search" during a night in January last, in Seventh alley, on going to a small "one-room shack," found defendant's horse and buggy in front of it; the horse being hitched to a telegraph pole. The officers looked through a hole in the door of the "shack," and saw the defendant and Ophelia Smith in a bed together, with their arms around each other and lying on their sides, undressed. The officers knocked on the door and were in a few minutes admitted by the defendant. Upon going into the room, they found the woman under the bed, with only a skirt drawn around her. The question is: Was this sufficient evidence of the corpus delicti upon which to base the admission of a confession by the defendant? The evidence does not show how long the defendant and the woman had been in the house together, nor does it show directly that they had been engaged in an act of sexual intercourse; but we cannot doubt that it afforded a reasonable inference that sexual intercourse had been indulged in by them. While the decisions, as stated above, hold that the state or condition of cohabitation against which the statute is leveled may well be assumed in a single day, we do not apprehend that the court meant that it would require an entire day for the assumption. On the contrary, if the evidence should reasonably afford an inference that the man and woman resorted to the "shack" for the purpose of engaging in sexual intercourse at will during the night, and intended to continue to do so afterwards as long as they might choose, and that they did have sexual intercourse with each other, we think that would be sufficient evidence of the corpus delicti for the admission of the confession of the defendant. We do not doubt that the evidence reasonably afforded the inference mentioned. Hall v. State, 53 Ala. 463; Smith's Case, 86 Ala. 64, 6 So. 71, 11 Am. St. Rep. 17; McAlpine's Case, 117 Ala. 93, 103, 23 So. 130.
The next question is whether the court committed error in allowing the witness by whom the confession of the defendant was proved to testify, over the objection of the defendant that the statement involving the confession was voluntarily made by the defendant. Whether or not a confession has been voluntarily made is a question which must be determined by the court (Bradford's Case, 104 Ala. 68, 16 So. 107, 53 Am. St. Rep. 24; 5 Mayfield's Dig. p. 184, § 12), and it requires no argument or citation of authority to show that to allow a...
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The central mistake of sex discrimination law: the disaggregation of sex from gender.
...Bodies, supra note 211, at 191. (238) Eva Saks made a similar observation about race and phenotype when she discussed Jones v. State, 47 So. 100 (Ala. 1908), a case in which the court regarded the question of whether a party "looked like a white woman" as a potentially different question of......